Antonio Villas-BoasJuno Power HUE ProFor the price, the $60 Juno Power HUE Pro is an excellent external battery that can easily charge your smartphone and still have enough power to give your tablet an emergency boost.

Slow to charge battery itself. May not fully charge smartphone and tablet at the same time, depending on which devices you own.

Bottom Line

For the price, the $60 Juno Power HUE Pro is an excellent external battery that can easily charge your smartphone and still have enough power to give your tablet an emergency boost.

What good is an expensive smartphone if its battery dies while you're out and about? Most smartphones these days can last at least a day, but if you know you won't get home to charge your phone before the day's end, an external battery is a must-have. At $59.99, the 10,000mAh Juno Power HUE Pro is a bargain that has more than enough juice to fully charge your smartphone with plenty left over to charge it again, or even give your tablet a boost. That makes it our new Editors' Choice for external batteries.

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Design and FeaturesThe Juno Power HUE Pro has a 4.23-by-3.11-by-0.88-inch (HWD) rectangular design with rounded edges, and weighs 12.35 ounces. It's clad in an appealing brushed aluminum finish, and comes in black, blue, gold, or silver. A rectangular LCD shows the exact percentage of remaining charge, which is nice, since most external batteries use simple LEDs that only indicate to the closest 10 percent of remaining charge at best, like the Powerstick+. There's a nifty touch-operated power button to the right of the display that activates the battery, and it turns on the included (and welcome) flashlight when double tapped. The top and bottom of the battery are made of white plastic, and you'll find two USB ports, a micro USB port, and the flashlight on the top edge.

One of the 5-volt USB ports outputs at 1 amp and is mainly designed for charging devices with smaller batteries, like smartphones. The other USB port outputs power at 2.1 amps, which is for charging larger tablets, but can also be used for fast-charging smartphones that can support it.

Performance and ConclusionWe used the HUE Pro to charge a depleted iPhone 6 Plus while streaming a YouTube video over LTE, and it added 10 hours, 41 minutes of additional streaming time. That's a good result for an external battery at this capacity and price. Comparatively, the 2,000mAh myCharge Energy Shot added 3 hours, 2 minutes in the same test.

In a separate charging test, the HUE Pro fully charged our depleted iPhone 6 Plus with 64 percent charge remaining in the battery itself, which we then used to charge a depleted iPad Air up to 53 percent until the HUE Pro was drained. The combined charge the HUE Pro outputted for this test was 7,175mAh, which is 2,825mAh short of its claimed 10,000mAh power storage. But most external batteries don't output as much as their claimed power storage.

In a test where we charged both devices at the same time while they were powered on, but resting (no interaction, Bluetooth off, and Wi-Fi on), the HUE Pro charged the iPhone 6 Plus plugged into the 1A output up to 87 percent and the iPad Air plugged into the 2.1A output to 58 percent. This result fell a bit short of our expectations, as the combined charge between both devices amounted to 7,176mAh, which is very similar to how much charge the HUE Pro provided in the aforementioned test. It was surely affected by the fact that both devices were on at the time of charging, but that still shouldn't count for the missing 2,824mAh.

I also noticed that the HUE Pro took a long time to charge itself compared with other external batteries. When I plugged in both the HUE Pro and the 8,000mAh Puku S8 to charge at the same time, the Puku had finished charging itself while the HUE Pro was only at 37 percent.

None of the above quirks diminish the value here, though. For $59.99, the Editors' Choice Juno Power HUE Pro is a comparatively inexpensive external battery that holds enough power to restore even a large smartphone with a high charge capacity, like the iPhone 6 Plus, at least twice. Just make sure to charge it well before you think you'll need it, as it can take several hours to fully charge. If you'd rather have something much more compact, and all you seek is an emergency battery boost for your smartphone, the smaller and lighter $40 TravelCard Charger is worth a look.

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About the Author

Before becoming PCMag’s Junior Consumer Electronics Analyst, Antonio graduated from Colgate University with a BA in History where he, upon writing his nine millionth essay, never thought he would ever write ever again, especially for a living. After working in PR and sales, Antonio realized his knowledge and passion for technology far exceeded norm... See Full Bio

Juno Power HUE Pro

Juno Power HUE Pro

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